Unlucky for Some
by Shyaway
Summary: It's Will's eleventh birthday, and all he wants is for his father to come home. Instead he receives a very unusual present...


Will belongs to Disney, as does his mother, technically. Feedback is much appreciated.

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It was Friday the thirteenth of January, Will's eleventh birthday, and so far it had been a great disappointment. Falling so soon after Christmas, just a week after Epiphany, his birthday celebrations were fated to be muted. This year, to make matters worse, it was the coldest day he could ever remember. Snow was coming down in thick sheets. His mother had forbidden him to go out in it – not that he really wanted to, since snowball fights would have to wait until the snow had settled – so he had been stuck inside by the fire all day, playing with his new whirligig while his mother sewed. She had done her best to make his day a happy one, making him a cake and promising to play cards as soon as she had finished the mending, but she could not make up for the biggest disappointment of all, that his father had not come home.

She had warned him, gently, not to hold out too much hope. Will had protested that it had been on his son's birthday that Bill Turner had last come home, and he might do so again. Mrs Turner explained that sailors couldn't always get leave from their captains. When Will looked dubious, she added that winter crossings of the Atlantic were perilous, and he wouldn't want his father to take such a needless risk, would he? Will had said he understood and dropped the subject. He had hoped, though, and watching his mother starting at every noise, then biting her lip and bending her head over her sewing again, he thought that she had hoped too.

He pulled at the strings and watched the whirligig spin. Why, if his father could not come himself, had he not written? It had been months since they had last had a letter from him. He always sent them greetings at Christmas before, always remembered in his Christmas letter to wish his son an early happy birthday. Will did not believe he would have forgotten. It might be that the letter had simply gone astray. Or perhaps the supply ship carrying the letters had been attacked by pirates. Will knew that the Caribbean waters were rife with those highwaymen of the sea. He did not fear that his father had fallen prey to them. He knew that Bill Turner was more than a match for any pirate.

A strangled sound caught his attention. He looked up to see his mother taking a great gulping breath as if she'd been drowning – or crying.

"Mamma, are you –"

She hastily turned her face away towards the window and made a few quick movements with her hand before looking back at him. "Look, the snow's slowing," she said with a too-bright smile. "Why don't you go outside?"

"But –" He got no further, his tongue paralysed by fear of unpredictable adult emotion.

"Go and see Mrs Danby. She said she had a present for you. Go on."

Will hovered, unwilling to leave, unsure how to offer comfort if he stayed. Mrs Turner solved his dilemma by arraying him in his jacket and propelling him out of the door. He stared at the closed door for a moment, but it offered him no advice, and the air was very cold, so he turned and trudged down the road to the Danbys' house.

He didn't like Mrs Danby. She had a disagreeable habit of pinching his cheek with her sharp fingers and exclaiming what a sweet handsome boy he was. He did like her oldest son Tom, who even though he was twenty-nine and old, always made time for Will. It wasn't just that which made the boy like him. Some years ago Tom had been a soldier and had fought at the battle of Blenheim under the command of the renowned Duke of Marlborough. Tom had been wounded and had come home with a permanent limp, but was no less of a local hero for that. Everyone in their village wanted to hear his stories of military life, and he had no more devoted audience than young Will Turner. They talked not only of Blenheim, but refought battles that had taken place long before either of them were even born. Edgehill, Tewkesbury, Agincourt, Evesham. Will loved the tales of heroic knights of old.

Tom's wife Catherine, the younger Mrs Danby, opened the door to him. "Will!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing out on a day like this? Come in and thaw yourself." She dragged him into the kitchen, where gathered around the fire were Tom, his mother, brother Richard, and two unmarried sisters, Alice and Prudence. Will greeted them all with varying degrees of enthusiasm – reluctance in the case of Mrs Danby, shyness with the pretty Prudence. Mrs Danby wished Will a happy birthday, ruffling his hair as she did so (he barely repressed a scowl), and got up to make him some hot tea.

"Wait till you see what Tom's made for you, Will," Catherine said fondly, leaning against her husband's chair, her hand on his shoulder. "He's been working on it for days."

Tom patted her hand. "Fetch it for me, Kitty." She stepped away, nearly tripping over her brother-in-law Richard. "Don't expect too much, Will, it isn't even finished yet," Tom said. Will nodded, thinking that that was what everyone seemed to be counselling him to do these days: don't hope too much, don't expect too much. Catherine came back with the mysterious item wrapped in sacking. Tom unwrapped it. "A knight should have a sword," he said.

Will took the wooden weapon. It was perfectly proportioned and beautifully carved. "It's lovely," he breathed.

Tom smiled. "I haven't finished carving the handle yet," he said, and Will noticed the handle's incomplete pattern. "I'll do that now." He took it back. Will watched him whittling at the wood with his knife. Mrs Danby brought him the tea. They sat and talked about the Christmas that had just past, and speculated whether the winter would get any harsher. No one inquired after Will's mother. They all knew it had been eight years since her husband had last been home, and Sarah Turner, no longer able to keep up the pretence that he would be back any day now, had been looking increasingly dejected.

"Here, Will," Tom said. "You put the final touches to it." Will took the sword and wielded the knife, at first uncertainly, then with increasing deftness. "You have a knack for it, lad," Tom said approvingly.

The younger girls, uninterested in weapons, had wandered away from the fire to peer out of the window at the snow. "It looks as though your mother has a visitor, Will," Alice observed.

Will's heart leapt. His father! "I have to go," he said, jumping up. "Thank you for the sword, Tom – and the tea, Mrs Danby." He raced home.

He was doomed to disappointment again. Whoever the visitor had been, they had already left when he arrived. His mother was standing by the hearth reading a letter and clutching something to her heart.

"What is it?" he asked, laying his sword down. "Is it from Father?"

She looked up, startled, apparently not having heard him come in. "Yes," she said in a tone of voice he had never heard before. "It's from your father."

"What does he say?" Will asked warily.

"I –" She shook her head as if to clear it. "He doesn't say anything. He says – he says he loves us, and … we should be cautious."

"Cautious?"

"We are to keep this safe." She held out the thing she had been pressing against her heart and gave it to him. "It's for you."

It was a gold medallion engraved with the universal symbol of piracy, a skull and crossbones. Will stared at it and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the snow outside. What had pirates to do with his father? Something terrible must have happened. "Does he say anything else?"

His mother's expression was one of bewildered pain. Will hated to see her looking so lost, but how could he comfort her when he was adrift himself? "He says he hopes to see us again one day. And then he says farewell."

Farewell. That could only mean one thing. His father was never coming back. He must have sent the medallion as a message, perhaps as a clue to his whereabouts, for Will was still sure that his idolised father would never abandon his wife and child. He looked into the empty eyes of the pirate skull on the medallion and vowed to find his father.

It was on that day that Will Turner first learned to hate pirates.


End file.
